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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All

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To: Bearcatbob who wrote (12219)	10/2/2007 12:49:20 AM
From: seventh_son	of 37515

Absolutely right. Actually, as someone who lives in Alberta, my impression is that the main impedement to oilsands development is a lack of people and lack of infrastructe, and if royalty rates impact ROI and some of the massive backlog of planned developments are scuttled, I honestly don't think that the province itself will suffer a lot. My understanding is that oilsands companies pay very little tax until they have paid off all their capital costs -- which if they keep expanding might be decades and decades away. It boils down to sort of a take on the old communist worker saying -- "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us", replaced with "government pretends to provide needed infrastructure and the big oil companies pretend to pay taxes to fund it". What needs to happen is that the government commits to expediting infrastructure investment, and the oil sands companies pay sufficient taxes to pay for this -- and compensate industry and people of the rest of Alberta who are suffering from runaway growth/inflation and all their employees leaving to drive a giant truck up north for big bucks. Since Alberta's personal tax rates are flat, it is the federal government that is cashing in big from the high salaries of all these new upper tax bracket people who were formerly driving school buses or waiting on tables. Many people in Calgary are suffering from exploding rents and house prices, lack of schools and roads, and a service industry whose service levels have been massively degraded across the board by so many people leaving for higher pay elsewhere, and so much new business and people moving in to support big oil. The main people having a big party in Alberta are the oil executives, and quite honestly a lot of other people are worse off from the boom. The rest of Canada is benefiting enormously from Alberta's oil wealth, given all the taxes that are paid and then redistributed to "have not provinces". If only this largesse flowing from Alberta were not so large that more people in the east would get off the welfare and UI it is funding and go to Alberta to build a road or drive a truck.

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